OutStories Bristol

***FULLY BOOKED***.  If you haven’t reserved a ticket and you turn up, we’re sorry to say you may be turned away.

Historian Josie McLellan tells the surprising story of gay activism in Cold War East Berlin. In the 1970s, a group of lesbians and gay men formed the HIB (Homosexual Interest Group Berlin), the first gay rights group in the Eastern Bloc. The HIB saw themselves as a ‘family’, supporting each other through difficult coming-outs, organising parties and balls for up to 200 people.

But they were also a highly political group, making interventions at public events and lobbying the East German authorities for official state recognition. Their links to Western gay activists were extensive – indeed a visit from Peter Tatchell was one of the key events in their early history.

How was all this possible under a dictatorial regime which was insistent that homosexuality should remain behind closed doors? Josie explains all, drawing on a series of interviews with members of the HIB, as well as their archives of photographs and film.

Dr. Josie McLellan is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of postwar Europe, with a particular interest in the way that economic and social change affects people’s everyday lives.

Free talk, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).

You can reserve your place on Eventbrite. You do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.

Friday 27 February 2015,   7pm

Upstairs at Roll for the Soul café,    2 Quay Street,    Bristol.     BS1 2JL  

Website and location

Full café-bar downstairs for refreshments.

Unfortunately we could not secure an accessible venue for this event;  it will take place up a flight of stairs and there is no lift. However, a sound recording of the talk will be taken and made available to anyone unable to participate. We are very sorry for this shortfall of standards in our programme of events.

LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.

UBU Festival of Liberation

What Next for the LGBT+ Movement
Following the Passing of the Same Sex Marriage Act?

Invited panelists will give their views on this question followed by an opportunity for the audience to contribute to the debate and ask our panelists questions.

The event is free and open to all.

Wednesday 25 February 2015.    6pm-7.30pm

Room AR1,  University of Bristol Students’ Union,  Richmond Building, 105 Queen’s Rd, Bristol, BS8 1LN
Map and getting there

The panel:

Chair:  Alice Phillips – Equality, Liberation and Access Officer at UBU
@alicephillips90
Alice is a University of Bristol Politics graduate who is the current Equality, Liberation and Access Officer at UBU. She is the curator of the festival and also organised the UBU Reclaim the Night march in November which 500 students and local people attended.

Fran Cowling – NUS LGBT Officer (Women’s Place)
@Fran_Cowling
Fran is the National Union of Students’ LGBT Officer (Women’s Place). She ran on a manifesto of challenging the cuts and making sure women’s voices are heard in a movement often dominated by gay men. She is also working on research around LGBT FE students’ experiences of education.

Daryn Carter – Director Bristol Pride
@daryncarter
Daryn is the Director of Bristol Pride, the largest free Pride Festival in the UK with a week of events ranging from theatre, film and dance with a one day festival in the heart of Bristol attracting thousands of people and international headline acts. Working all year round Bristol Pride also delivers training and consultation services to businesses and presentations on workplace and school bullying. Daryn is also the Director of Diversity Careers, which delivers diversity focused careers events.

Noorulann Shahid – NUS LGBT Committee
@YxxngHippie
Noorulann is the Black Rep on the NUS LGBT Committee and also works to support student campaigns and activism at UBU. Last year their twitter campaign #LifeOfAMuslimFeminist went viral. The campaign was featured on Buzzfeed, and Noorulann wrote a piece about it for the Huffington Post.

Cheryl Morgan – TransBristol (and OutStories Bristol)
@CherylMorgan
Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic and member of local group TransBristol which aims to create a safe space where trans identified people in the Bristol area can share ideas, provide support and plan events. Cheryl blogs at http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/

Accessibility

AR11 is a fully accessible room on the second floor of the union, reached via a lift on the ground floor. If you have any access needs or questions about the panel get in touch with the Equality, Liberation and Access Officer, Alice Phillips – alice.phillips@bristol.ac.uk

This event is covered by UBU’s Safe Space Policy. A full copy of the policy is available here.

LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.

Thomas Glave speaking at Oslo Freedom Forum

Professor Thomas Glave of the University of Warwick will give a reading/talk titled:

Jamaica, Secrets, and Dangerous Sex

It will look at the use of Jamaican language and contemporary culture in regard to ‘taboo’ forms of sexuality and some of the tensions that surround ‘unspeakable’ forms of ‘queer’ sexuality and desire.

Warning: the talk will contain strong language and sexual descriptions.

Free talk, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).

You can reserve your place on Eventbrite. You do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.

Saturday 14 February 2015,   2:30pm

The Studio,   M-Shed,   Princes Wharf,   Wapping Road,   Bristol   BS1 4RN

 M Shed
How to get there and map
The Studio is on the first floor with lift access.

Professor Thomas Glave is the 2014 Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick School of Modern Languages and Cultures. He is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (Lambda Literary Award, 2005), The Torturer’s Wife (Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist and Lambda Literary Award finalist, 2008) and Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh (2013, Lambda Literary Award finalist, 2014). He is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Lambda Literary Award, 2008). His most recent work has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, and in several anthologies.

A professor of English and creative writing at SUNY-Binghamton, Glave has been Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT and a 2012 Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge.

LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.

OutStories Bristol is developing a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. We are calling this project place and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.

We hold monthly meetings to formulate initiatives and develop volunteer activities. These meetings are open to everyone who would like to get involved with research in local archives and libraries, oral history interviewing, or digitizing material for upload to websites.

Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.

Next meeting:

Tuesday 10 February 2015,     7pm to 9pm

Old Market Tavern,     29-30 Old Market Street,     Old Market,     Bristol     BS2 0HB

Old Market Tavern                       Map and location

Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun. Artist: Simeon Solomon

Because trans rights have only recently been talked about in public, many people assume that being trans is a modern invention, perhaps something invented by psychiatrists. However, gender-variant people have always been with us.

Cheryl Morgan takes us on a tour of some notable cases from history and makes the case for a rigid insistence on the binary nature of gender being a comparatively recent, Western, invention.

Free, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).

You can reserve your place for the talk via Eventbrite. But, you do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.

Saturday 7 February 2015, 2.30pm

Your invitation to Trans Remembrance Day

International Trans Day of Remembrance is held to remember and memorialise those across the globe who have lost their lives to transphobic hate crime over the last 12 months and to raise awareness of this issue.  Three events are happening in Bristol.

At 2pm the Trans Flag will be raised above City Hall, College Green, by the Lord Mayor, The Right Honourable Councillor Alastair Watson. This is a public event and all are invited.

A Ceremony of Remembrance is to be held from 6:30pm to 7:30pm at the Pavilion on the Harbourside, near to the Lloyds TSB building. Organised by Bristol’s trans community, this is a private event open to trans people, their friends, family and allies. The Pavilion will be open from 6pm.

After the ceremony, join the Rainbow Group (the LGBT network at Bristol City Council) and LGBT Bristol for refreshments and nibbles. Ruth Arnold from Bristol Hate Crime Services will be there with information on Hate Crime support, and Sarah Minter from LGBT Bristol would like to hear from all those who would like to input into research she and Alex are conducting to develop a plan for funding to provide better trans support, provision and awareness in Bristol.

For further information see the TransBristol website. Click here for directions to the Pavilion.

Bristol University will be having their own Remembrance Ceremony outside of the Victoria Rooms starting at 8:15pm. Details are available on Facebook.

We look forward to seeing you there.

 Simeon Solomon: a talk by Frank Vigon

Simeon Solomon

Bacchus

The painter Simeon Solomon was born in 1840 in the East End of London to a well-known Jewish family. His mother, sister and brother were also artists and he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as Swinburne. Solomon was something of a celebrity: he exhibited at the RA, Oscar Wilde owned his work (and mentions it in De Profundis) and a long poem he wrote, “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”, was praised by John Addington Symonds.

In 1873 Solomon was arrested in public toilets near Oxford Street and tried for “attempted buggery, effectively ending his artistic career. A year later, he was arrested in another toilet in Paris and imprisoned. Within a decade of imprisonment, Solomon was in a workhouse in Covent Garden, still painting but alcoholic. He died of drink-related complications in 1905 and was buried at Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

The Sleepers, and the One that Watcheth

Solomon’s restored grave at Willesden Jewish Cemetery

His life has fascinated writers including Neil Bartlett whose 1987 play about the painter is also called “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”. Frank Vigon became interested in Simeon Solomon when preparing a lecture on Jewish painters. He has campaigned to restore Solomon’s long-neglected grave in Willesden and set up a scholarship at the University of York to establish a legacy in the artist’s name.

The talk is free but donations will be gratefully received.

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OutStories Bristol AGM

The talk will be followed by refreshments and the annual general meeting of OutStories Bristol, which all are welcome to attend. We will update you on what we have done so far and what projects we are working on next.

Saturday 18 October 2014           2:30pm to 4:30pm

M Shed
Princes Wharf,  Wapping Road,  Bristol,  BS1 4RN
How to get there and map

Join Tom Marshman on a walk around the old city, stopping by places rich in memories, as he unveils true stories of the local LGBT history. From the politically charged marches and protests, to the prosaic and the illicit, this walk-about performance celebrates full lives of a community through their stories.

For details see the Bristol MayFest programme.

Note:  This event is not organised by OutStories Bristol.

OutStories Bristol’s ‘Revealing Stories’ exhibition is on display in the Bristol Record Office from 10 June to 4 October 2014.

The exhibition is based on archival records and oral history interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people associated with Bristol and the surrounding area. Focusing on living memory (c. 1940s to the present) it tells how people fought to shape and control their own lives. It is the story of those who witnessed these changes and helped to make history.

As well as the vertical text panels from the original exhibition at Bristol’s M Shed in February/March last year, this display includes material from the Bristol City archives not previously shown including programmes from Bristol Pride festivals in the 1980s/90s and early documents relating to Bristol Gay Switchboard, Gay West and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.

It will be accompanied by a talk ‘Untold Stories’ on 11th July about the making of the exhibition and the stories and people featured in it. The talk will reference documents at Bristol Record Office and excerpts from oral histories collected from LGBT Bristolians.

Tuesday 10th June to Saturday 4th October 2014

Bristol Record Office
‘B’ Bond Warehouse,     Smeaton Road,      Bristol,     BS1 6XN

Bristol Record Office opening hours                    How to get there and map

Revealing Stories exhibition at M Shed, Feb 2013